Solar Cooking Archive Discussion Forums

SharonID · Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 74 Location: northern Idaho

This one is going to be really nice. It's kind of a memorial gift to the widow of the man to whom my solar advocacy is partly dedicated. (Google "Leroy Lee" +USFS or +"Forest Service" to read about humble forester—rural science teacher later in life—who saved a whole lot of trees.) She's an organic truck farmer, one of the hardest working people I know. Lives off the grid but does have a propane tank for cooking and low-level lights. She's in a valley where she doesn't have the late sun I've got, but she's got good sun for primetime, and keeps a pretty early schedule, so she's up and around in plenty of time to get it going nice and early, and then she spends her day going around between garden, sheds, house, chicken coop, etc, so it'll be easy for her to tweak it to keep it hot.

It's a rugged life, so this cooker has to be as built-to-last as cardboard can get. I lucked into a fantastic outer box... a double-wall corrugated Tektronix color printer box from the photo studio where my roommate works, in beautiful condition. I'm using foil-on-bubble insulation against the outer box. There'll be enough layers of cardboard and foil and air space between it and the real heat that I don't think fumes will be a problem, and it should help give it an edge in marginal conditions and make it a better warming oven for hayboxing the food if the sun goes down before suppertime. I hope so anyway.

There's enough room between the inner and outer boxes for various layers of cardboard and foil and cardboard-stripped air spaces, and I'm making the same kind of replaceable foiled cardboard liner that I did in my cooker. I sprung for tempered glass (I know I'll lose some transparency but feel the greater durability will be worth it), and I'll get a nice piece of 18-guage steel for the bottom tray, just as I did for mine. I love that piece of steel. Really helps hold the heat when I have intermittent clouds, which seems to be more than usual this year.

Then I'm going for it with the cloth and glue and beeswax treatment (though maybe I'll just give the bottom several coats of the exterior latex I got for free from a local recycle program). Should be a sight to behold when it's done! Should work, too. She's not eating enough... by the end of the day she's too tired to fuss with it... but this way she can just stick something in early while she's still fresh and just tweak it once in awhile, then throw in a quilt and shut it when the sun drops. Voila. I hope. Wink

Just gotta glue foil in the inner box and make the replaceable liner and then I can cut the lid and put in the glass, and then it's time for fun with glue and cloth. Should be interesting. I'm glad I found a local source for white glue by the gallon, and at a special sale price to boot! Very Happy

Regards,
SharonID
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Idaho Regional Representative, International Women's Writing Guild
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